The theme that strikes me the most, was that fear and suspicion are infectious and can produce a state of general hysteria that results in the destruction of public order and rationality. Now, what does that statement actually mean? Let's break it down into easier terms. We'll start with "fear and suspicion are infectious". This is your basic idea of rumors and gossip. For example, many of the town's people were convicted of witchery, do to the fact that someone suspected that person was practicing witchcraft or they feared that person. Everyone else was then frightened or suspected that person. They all suspected that person was practicing witchcraft without actually knowing the facts. All they had was a suspicion against that person or feared him or he

At the beginning of the play, the theme is very subtle. The girls are in trouble. This does not have much to do with the theme yet. That is, until it is heard that the girls were practicing witchcraft in the forest. That statement changes the whole play. It is based on what exactly the girls were doing in the forest, and why Betty Parris and Ruth Putnam are sick. Betty is pretending to be sick, so she hears everything that is being said in her room. Ruth is also just pretending. Reverend Parris, Betty's father, found the girls dancing in the forest. This scared Betty, so she pretended to be sick. When her father found them, she knew she would get in a great amount of trouble. So she wouldn't get into as much trouble for dancing in the forest, she pretended she was sick.

After a while, the girls started to see how many people were getting convicted, and how many were going to die because of what they started. They also so how horrible this was to the town. If the Salem witchcraft trials would have kept on going on, then virtually everyone in the town would have been convicted. The trials lead to many deaths in the town. The public authorities, Hathorne and Danforth, finally realize how bad the situation actually were. They started out with much of the authority and doing what they thought was right with the jailing and hanging. At the end, while they see the vast amount of people being hanged, they realize they had been doing the wrong thing. They put many honest people on the stand to be hanged. They just want to get it over with now. They don't want anymore people to die.

The girls then begin saying they were conjuring spirits and they saw people from Salem with the Devil. They were actually out in the forest, to find out why Goody Putnam had lost seven out of eight of her babies. The girls started naming people they supposedly saw with the Devil. The people the girls "saw" were actually the people they disliked. The town's people weren't practicing witchcraft or conjuring with the Devil. The girls just wanted to ge

Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1393
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)